


a little game before the tragedy

by billspilledquill



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: (sort of), Game of Choices, Gen, M/M, POV Second Person, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 14:44:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14167176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: The prince of Denmark is mad.> Believe it> Embrace it





	a little game before the tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive me it’s 3 am

 

You arrive at Wittenburg. You were aspiring to be a scholar, for that was what a poor bastard could be beside death or digging death. The school hall is bigger than your room.

> Walk to the right room

> Walk to the left room

You walk into the right room, discovering a noble’s son. He looks like it, or at least, his clothes betrayed him. The boy smiles, and you forget to murmur an apology. You stand there, looking at his cuffs, the linens from France, and the glint in his eyes.

He offers you to enter. He has a drink in one hand, Ovid on the other.

His name, you later learn, is Hamlet. He likes books, metaphysics, and later, much much later, you learn that he likes to be held, too.

> Call him my lord

> Call him by his name

“My lord,” you say, and he frowns ever so slightly, “pardon me for any discretion, my lord, but are you the prince of Denmark?”

He nodded quietly, smiles, “I also am that, too, fellow student.”

You relax, knowing that their paths would never cross. His hands look very soft, you wonder if you have ever held them in yours, “My lord,”

“Horatio,” he says, and you don’t ask him why he knows your name. You just nod.

> Stay here

> Study alone in your room

Under the blur of the time and maddening discussions about philosophy, Hamlet laughs and chuckles made him forget about the air for awhile. His dark curls sometimes hide his eyes, for their colors are all as black as the night’s pale pale sky.

Sometimes you will be confused by choices.

> Write sonnets about him

> Write curses about him

Because you feel that you have did both, for he survives the scorns of time, but not the way he blinks his eyes or how he quirks his lips. How he would have laugh then, and you wish he would, because sometimes you forget how he laughs as well.

 

* * *

   
He tells you about his father’s death.

This story is too quick, you think. You should have write more about him, you think, than what everyone knows about him. You could have written more how he had read Ophelia’s letters with loving eyes, how he has lived with ardor until that moment, how and why and which and who, there is so much to say about one’s life.

But you do not know, because you promise that you would tell the story of a prince, not of a boy. You understand it, how princes should behave. Every poor man knows how princes behave, it is in your blood. You snatch your quill, snatching papers after paper.

> Stay at Wittenburg

> Go with Hamlet to Elsinore

You continue your snatching, the quill lost its sharp edges, the ink tainted your fingers black like dried, damned blood.

 

* * *

   
You still come to Elsinore, at last, because choices are just a set of actions with priorities. He greets you with great happiness, but you think they already know that.

The lines are made, you thought. And you follow yours.

> Tell him about the ghost

> Tell him how much you miss him and invite him to run away

The furnished tables lost its temper. You tell him. This is a game you are playing against yourself, you know, because a tragedy starts always with a little game.

 

* * *

   
The prince of Denmark is mad.

> Believe it

> Embrace it

“I would take the ghost’s words for a thousand pounds!” He says to himself or to you, because somehow it starts to not matter, “What, Horatio?”

You cover his hands on yours, embracing the small part of him that is not mad, not too mad. And you sing in your hand through the coldness of the other boy’s skin. How weightless it felt.

You begin to wonder if he is the one that is not real, at the end.

 

* * *

 

Ophelia, Ophelia, Ophelia, he says, hairs in his eyes, the color of his eyes brighter than his hair, Ophelia, Ophelia, Ophelia.

> Ophelia

> Ophelia

> Ophelia

“Ophelia, my lord,” you say, knowing he is not supposed to be here, and you should not say this part of the speech, “is drowned.”

* * *

 

 

“Laertes is going to kill me,” he says, confident, as if this is the only thing he is confident in his life, “I am going to die in his duel.”

“If your mind dislikes anything,” you say, tired of the unregular lines and its false promises, “obey it.”

“I don’t dislike it,” he says, so for a moment you are not Horatio, you are the reader. You don’t mind because you know the ending, you don’t mind because he doesn’t dislike it. You are not the one to perish. We are not the executioner in this play. But you are Horatio again, and you are not taking this answer.

> Kiss him

> Kill him

You hand him his spear and kiss his hand. His fingers are warm under your touch. He looks grateful.

 

* * *

   
You know where this ends up. Because you talked about how he likes to be held, perhaps. Or how he always looks pale and thin, or you have read a play called Hamlet. Either way, it ends up with him in your arms.

It goes like this: his mother has taken the poison cup, died. He wounds Laertes, and wounds himself. He kills his uncle. He will die.

And after it will go like this: Horatio survives. The prince of Norway comes, conquers the country with or without Hamlet’s dying vote.

And after this all ends, it will go like this: you are reading Shakespeare, or Horatio, or Hamlet. You are complaining or admiring his words. You stumble into this. You have clicked into it. It is a story. You could reread it, it will ends up the same.

But now Hamlet is in your arms, powerless of this all, and you think, me too. You look at him, because you always look at him. He is ordering you to stay alive.

> Fulfill his promise

> Die alongside him

This is not a choice, you know. It is what your english teacher would like you to write about, she is asking you right now _what would happen if Horatio dies? Draw the themes of survival and friendship in your essay._ She is writing on her chalkboard right now.

And you think, easy. You may have textual evidence that the rest is not at all silenced.

 

* * *

  
You arrive on Wittenburg. You were aspiring to be a scholar, for that was what a poor bastard could be beside death or digging death, The school hall is bigger than your room.

> Walk to the right room

> Walk to the left room

You walk into the left room. It is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are making love to each other.

After, at Elsinore, you arrive with them to spy on a certain prince of Denmark on his seeming madness. The queen is smiling at you.

 

 

 


End file.
